Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist

242 Pages·2001·3.27 MB·English

by  Guy Consolmagno

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B
ROTHER
A
STRONOMER
Other books by
BROTHER GUY CONSOLMAGNO
The Way to the Dwelling of Light
Turn Left at Orion with Dan Davis
Worlds Apart with Martha Schaefer
Cosmic Pinball, contributor
-=
B
R O T H E R
A
STRONOMER
A V S
DVENTURES OF A ATICAN CIENTIST
[]
Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ
VATICAN OBSERVATORY
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DOI:10.1036/0071376585
C
ONTENTS
[]
INTRODUCTION
A DAYINTHELIFE 1
PART ONE
UPON THESE ROCKS
Aliens at the Vatican 13
The Case of the Fiery Fingers 29
The Vindication of Mars 47
PART TWO
THE CONFESSION OF A VATICAN SCIENTIST
Precursors of Evil 61
The Rift of Popular Culture 81
Finding God in Creation 99
PART THREE
ONCE IN A LIFETIME
Holes in the Sand 115
Call and Response 127
Justice in the Oceans of Europa 137
Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? 149
• v •
Contents
PART FOUR
WIDE WILD WHITENESS
Well Met at Ansmet 157
Erebus and Terror 165
Soul on Ice 173
The Easter Egg Hunt 181
Walking in Heaven 191
We’ve Got Company 201
Acquainted with All My Ways 207
Hunting the White Elephant 211
Northward Ho! The Wagons 215
AFTERWORD
ABOUTTHISBOOK 225
• vi •
I :
NTRODUCTION
A D L
AY IN THE IFE
[]
The Missing Mass Problem
The noise outside my window wakes me up even before the alarm has
had a chance to go off. Workers happily shouting to each other in Ital-
ian are dragging a hundred chairs out into the courtyard below my
room. In an hour, the chairs will be filled by a group of nuns from
Poland, singing their hearts out at the Pope’s Mass. Grumbling at the
noise, I stumble out of bed and into the shower.
Daily Mass for me is at 7 a.m. Our chapel here in the Jesuit com-
munity of the Vatican Observatory overlooks the courtyard where the
Pope presides; we want to be finished before he starts, so that we don’t
have to compete with the singing that fills the whole palace. Most of
the year, our quarters here in the Alban Hills south of Rome are quiet
and almost deserted. But for 2 months, mid-July through September,
they’re filled with activity as the Pope comes to escape the summer
heat of Rome.
• 1 •
BROTHER ASTRONOMER
Mass is in Italian. Working in a foreign language, even the lan-
guage of my great grandfather, is still a challenge for my American
ears. But I’m bilingual in another sense as well. I’m an astronomer,
with degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
and the University of Arizona, and for 25 years I’ve worked and con-
versed with fellow planetary astronomers. For the last 10 years, I’ve
also been a Jesuit brother, a student of the spiritual exercises of St.
Ignatius, conversant with the terms—and concerns—of the theolo-
gians.
Some people are surprised that the Vatican supports an astronom-
ical observatory. The Chicago Tribune (the same paper that declared
“Dewey Defeats Truman” in 1948) once suggested we were the Pope’s
astrologers who set the date of Easter every year. The Weekly World
Newsthinks we’re training to be missionaries to Martians. A late-night
radio talk show has suggested we’re behind the conspiracy to cover up
the truth behind UFOs!
But, in fact, astronomy was part of the original seven subjects of
the medieval universities, and those universities were themselves
founded by the Church. The “father of geology” who first described
and classified minerals was the Dominican monk known today as
Albert the Great. The “father of astrophysics” who first classified
stars by their spectra was a Jesuit, Angelo Secchi. The modern big
bang theory originated with a twentieth-century priest, Georges
Lemaître.
The Vatican had a direct practical interest in supporting astro-
nomical research when it reformed the calendar in 1582—a work
headed by the Jesuit mathematician Christopher Clavius. There’s a
prominent crater on the Moon named for him (as fans of the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey will recall) along with two dozen other craters
named for Jesuit astronomers. No surprise; the fellow who drew the
map and named the craters, the basis of all our modern Moon maps,
was himself the Jesuit priest Francesco Grimaldi. (He also invented
the wave theory of light.)
And yet, this mass of religious tradition at the heart of our science
is something many people completely miss.
• 2 •